


as the tide

by 75hearts



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, F/M, but they are Lifelong Family, super nonlinear, the magcretia is stolen century-era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 10:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12679917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/75hearts/pseuds/75hearts
Summary: for sixty-five years, they know this: they love each other.she changes. he changes.(and so many years later, they learn this: their love has changed, but they still love each other.)





	as the tide

It is less than a week after she arrived when Magnus finally manages to break the silence. The sun has set, and they are sitting outside on his bench, swatting at mosquitoes and remembering.

“You know it can’t be--” He breaks off, stares at his hands.

“Of course.” Her voice is torn between relief and pain.

“I like you, Lucretia. I thought I loved you.” At her reaction, the way she bites her lip just a little bit, he knows she’s who’s trying to hide how much it hurts. He continues quickly: “I forgive you. It’s not about that. I promise. I--I guess I did love you, and I still do. But Julia… She was my wife. You can’t replace that. Nobody can. It’s different. I’ve never loved someone like that before. Not like that. And this… it can’t be that. Nothing will ever be like that again.”

“I understand.” And the thing is, she does. It breaks her heart a little, but she understands. She visited Raven’s Roost, sometimes, and Magnus was always so, so happy, happier than she had ever seen him. Sometimes it hurt, but in a way that convinced her she had done the right thing. Other times, when Davenport was reduced down to nothing but a blank stare and a cheerful tone, it was the joy she clung to.

Magnus barely pauses. “But it can still be _something_. You’re still… You’re still my _family_.” With that, he takes her hand, and kisses her once, gently, on the forehead.

And just like that, Lucretia is crying.

 

-

 

“I do.”

Magnus’s voice is strong and steady, unchanged by the tears that run down his face as he stares at Julia, face full of love.

She’s beautiful, of course, and he is ruggedly handsome. Neither of them are unmarred by scars--Magnus in particular has all the ones Lucretia remembers, plus some--but it’s in a way that somehow only makes them look better. More lived-in. It’s certainly a different kind of beauty from the twins’ effortless glamour, but they are beautiful nonetheless.

Lucretia smiles, a little. It is a different kind of smile than the one that spreads effortlessly across Magnus’s face, but it isn’t the stone cold face of Madame Director either.

 

Later, Magnus comes over. Pours her a drink. “I don’t think we’ve met before,” he says, curiosity evident all over his face.

“I...no. I don’t live here. Just passing through.”

“Alright,” he says. He doesn’t ask how or why she came to his wedding. Doesn’t point out that he didn’t invite her. Just accepts her answer at face value.

“Congratulations, by the way.”

“I’m very lucky,” he says, stealing a glance back at Julia, who waves at him. His smile sneaks back onto his face and he turns to move towards her again, but Lucretia interrupts.

“The gazebo is beautiful,” she says. It’s not what she wanted to say. Anything she wanted to say would be static. Anything she wanted to say would ruin the grin playing on his lips.

“I made it myself,” he says, and his smile stays, soft and bright and genuine.

“I--have to go now.” And now Lucretia is the one turning to leave, because she suddenly knows she cannot have this conversation anymore with this man who does not, cannot, remember her. Not today. Not as Lucretia.

 

-

 

When Raven’s Roost is destroyed, Magnus falls to his knees amidst the rubble and screams. His hands dig through the ashes mindlessly, mechanically, searching for something, anything, but there is nothing there but more ash. He cries and cries, but no matter how long he stays, he does not find anything: no locks of hair or scraps of fabric, no wedding rings or carved ducks. But he knows that even if he had, it wouldn’t be enough; what he was really looking for was Julia, alive and well, to come and embrace him and tell him that everything’s alright. He would never find that again, because she is gone, gone forever. There is not even enough left of her for Magnus to dig a grave for.

Eventually, he leaves.

 

-

 

After getting the Gaia Sash, the only thing Lucretia can think about is losing Captain Bane. He was… well, if not a friend, then one of the closest things she had allowed herself to have in the past decade. Still, right now she is standing in front of her only living real friends, and they cannot know that they are her friends. Right now, she is Madame Director. Their boss. Head of the Bureau of Balance. She keeps her face carefully schooled, but she knows that there is still grief there. Grief and exhaustion.

Magnus notices immediately, because of course he does. Before she can even say anything, he is trying to give her a hug, because of course he is. And she wants it more than anything else in the world, but she also knows that if he hugs her, she will break, and she can’t have that right now. She holds up a hand, taking the tiniest of steps back.

Magnus shrugs. “Offer’s on the table. Open invite.”

Lucretia changes the topic. Compliments them all on winning the race: “It was--it was unconventional, but impressive.”

Magnus nods, grunts affirmation. She continues, a little amused despite herself. They have changed so much, but they are still consistently just as ridiculous as they were a decade prior, and she still loves it. She missed those shenanigans _so much_. “Which might as well be the catchphrase for your trio.”

“Yes.” Magnus smiles this time, acknowledging the truth of what the director says. And his smile gives her the strength to continue.

“I need to know something, and I need you to tell the truth.” She pauses, lets them goof off.  “I need to know what happened in Captain Bane’s office.”

And, after so many more shenanigans, they tell her about Barry. And everything else that she had been worried about is blown away in the shock of hearing about him again. Alive.

She tells them all to be careful, to stay away from him. She does not take Magnus up on the hug, no matter how much she wants to. Later that night, alone and in the dark, she lets herself cry. She cannot tell who she is crying for.

 

-

 

It started on one of the early cycles. They were drunk one night, all of them, on the beach, and somehow Lucretia wound up admitting she had never kissed anyone.

“Wait--wait up, are you saying that you’ve _never_ been _kissed_?” Taako asked, overdramatic but clearly genuinely shocked.

“No offense, of course, that’s fine and all, I just woulda thought…” Merle blusters.

Lup laughs in the background, makes a sarcastic comment directed towards her brother, but Lucretia doesn’t hear it because suddenly she is incredibly aware of Magnus rushing over and putting a gentle hand on her cheek. He stops just short of her to ask, quietly, “May I?”

She gasps out a “Yes,” and everyone is cheering as their lips meet, as their lips linger.

 

-

 

They are not a thing the way Lup and Barry are a thing. They do not have love-struck duets or marriage after marriage or a century of a slow-blooming happy ending or the promise of eternal life with each other. They are young and silly, and whatever is between them is made of laughter as much as it is love, closer to best friends than husband and wife.

But when they are lonely, or stupid, or both, they come home to one another’s arms. Like waves, it's in the push-and-pull that their love works. When Magnus wants to do something stupid, Lucretia will be there to hold him back. And when Lucretia curls in on herself out of fear, Magnus will be there to coax her out. After a century of practice, their bodies fit together like puzzle pieces. They teach each other things that they never learned in school: Lucretia learns that crying is good for you, and so are hugs, big bear hugs (just let it all out, Magnus says). Magnus learns not to start taking off his clothes until he’s made sure that they’re on a world that has condoms (you’re an idiot, Lucretia says).

The others tease them, sometimes. They make up for it by teasing the others twice as hard. But when it comes down to it, they’re all family, and they know it. Lucretia’s drawing of everyone hangs in the cabin of the Starblaster, and one day when she’s looking at it, Magnus picks her up off the floor with a big laugh. “Magnus!” he shouts, and she laughs too.

One day, they are reading to the voidfish. Lucretia’s voice is soothing, and Magnus is content to listen to it even though he can’t quite grab onto what she’s saying. He watches as Fisher’s bell pulses, blues and greens and purples lighting up the room, and his heart swells to watch him. A lull comes in the reading and he gathers up Lucretia in his arms as she leans into his embrace, and he is happy. In this moment, they can almost pretend that this is normal, that they are like any other young couple and not on a spaceship, not running away from the hunger. They can pretend that they have not witnessed the deaths of countless worlds, that they have not cried over each others’ bodies, that they are not powerless against the next apocalypse. Soon, the spell will break and they will be running again, but at this second, they are safe, and they are happy, and the amount of love in the room would be enough to run the bond machine for ten years.

 

-

 

Taako is threatening her and then Magnus points the flaming raging poisoning sword of doom at her and she doesn’t know what to say, but she tries anyway, words and words and words falling out of her mouth. They’re not enough. They’re never enough. Magnus tells her as much. She can’t stop.

Taako gives up. Turns his back. She doesn’t know if it’s easier or harder, not to have to see his tears.

 

-

 

Magnus wakes up on the deck of the Starblaster, and Lucretia is there, head in her hands, slumped and exhausted. She is panting as she whispers, more to herself than anything. “I made it. I made it! They tracked me down... and I got away on the ship, but they kept following. For a year I ran and I hid-- and I had to fight, and I had to repair the ship in secret, I had to learn how to repair the ship. I was the only one. If I died too-- I don’t even know how to fly the ship. I fucking made it!”

Magnus doesn’t know how to respond, at first. He stays nearby, asks questions carefully, puts his hand gently on her back instead of pulling her into a kiss, unsure of how to deal with the way Lucretia has changed. From his perspective, it has been instantaneous; one moment, she is the same girl he has known for sixty-five years; the next, she is stronger, more independent, more sad. From her perspective, she has spent a year alone, miserable, on the run, desperate, and her friends have woken up as if they had just taken a quick nap. He listens, as she tells him the story of her terrible, lonely year. “I don’t know how I did it. I just knew that I _had_ to,” she says, leaning back in her chair one night.

“I’m so glad you did,” Magnus says.

“Sometimes... it still doesn’t feel real, I guess. That I did it. That you’re all here again.”

And with that, Magnus pulls her into a bear hug, crushing her in his arms. She starts crying and he immediately stops, pulls away, frantically tries to comfort her. “I’m sorry--I--”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she says quickly, wiping at her eyes. “I just… I needed that.”

They don’t talk about it any more, but things are different after that. Not completely dissimilar, but not quite the same, either. Lucretia is changed, in ways that can’t be taken back. She’s more confident, more capable, more proactive, but also something else. More burdened, maybe. And it’s strange, because Lucretia has changed, and around her, everyone and everything else has stayed exactly the same, down to the black eye from 65 years ago still decorating Magnus’s face.

Still, Magnus is there. And, as he assures her repeatedly, he’s not leaving her, ever again.

 

-

 

Over a hundred years pass and Lucretia shuts out Magnus for the first time. They have spent the last hundred years without boundaries, sharing clothes and rooms and kisses, Magnus around every corner to yell his name, Lucretia in every crevice scribbling in her journals. And now Lucretia shuts the door in his face, refuses to answer his questions. “I’m working,” she says, and that is the end of things. She doesn’t leave her room, doesn’t allow visitors. Magnus hovers outside for weeks like a kicked puppy outside his old home, refusing to believe that his owner doesn’t want him anymore. “Give it up, my dude,” says Taako. “She wants to be alone, right?” Magnus shakes his head. He’s never been without her like this. The relics have been hard on everyone--every day, he wonders how the chalice is being used, and the not knowing haunts him--but it has destroyed Lucretia, and even Magnus cannot reach her.

He spends the time outside her door carving a duck for her, hoping it will make her feel better. He personalizes it, paints it, makes it look just like her but as a duck. Finally, one day she isn’t in her room, and his heart lifts as he walks over to Fisher’s chambers.

She turns around at the sound of footsteps and instantly her chest seizes in horror. He wasn’t supposed to be here. “God, Magnus, no… You weren’t supposed to see this, I’m so sorry, Magnus.”

He is already forgetting, already dazed. “What are you do- what?”

Hearing his voice, hearing Magnus, Magnus who she loves more than anyone else on this world, not knowing who she is, hurts Lucretia in a way she forgot she was capable of. “Magnus, please--this is just for a little bit, I’m gonna stop this, what we’ve done to this world. I’m gonna find you a place where you can be happy again, it’s just for a little while, and then, you’ll remember, I promise.” Her voice takes on a note of desperation near the end, as though she is begging him to be okay.

“Who...are you?” Magnus asks, face full of confusion, and she takes a deep breath, reminds herself that this is for his own good, for the good of the whole world. That no matter how much she loves him, she had to do this.

“I can do this Magnus, please, please just lie down, I don’t want you to fall and hurt yourself. I love you, Magnus, I love all of you. I’m sorry. It’ll be over soon.”

 

-

 

The world is saved, and she apologizes. Her voice is half-full of wonder at the fact that the world is saved, that everyone is safe and happy and they can stay that way forever, and half-full of a terrible, terrible guilt that soaks every word in the oppressive pain of someone who has just realized that they have done the unforgivable. “I’m so sorry. I--I was so… myopic. I worked so hard on this plan, I gave up. I had blinders on, and I don’t expect you all to forgive me but--”

Magnus rushes over once again, crushes her in a hug, and she starts crying--no, weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks as her whole body is wracked with sobs. Through her tears, she manages to look up at him, get her words out. “I’ll find a way to make it up, I promise.”

He just smiles, and holds her tighter, and tells her, “It’s okay.” And, in that moment, tears streaming down her face, she can almost bring herself to believe him.

 

-

 

When Lucretia retires from the Bureau of Benevolence, Magnus is the first one she calls. Over her stone of farspeech, she asks to come over. His answer is quick, unthinking: “Of course.”

She comes down not long after, a cannonball to his backyard. She comes out smiling and laughing, and he rushes out of his house to sweep her up in a hug. She is so old, so frail, and he is not exactly untouched by age either--his sideburns are more gray than brown--but she has twenty years on him now, and it shows.

He lets go, steps back, marvels at her. “It’s been so long.”

“I know,” she says, a bit of sadness in her voice. “Too long. But I had to work. You know that.”

“I do. But I missed you, ‘Creesh.” He invites her in, pours them both a cup of tea. For the first night, he sleeps on the couch, ignoring Lucretia’s protests. Then he gets to work on a new bed.

At night, sometimes they stay up, sit on a bench Magnus made and reminisce until late or just sit in companionable silence with the sound of frogs and crickets behind them. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes Johann sits out with them, and they all fall asleep with their hands in his fur and wake up with aching joints.

“Worth it,” Magnus says, after one night like that, and despite the shooting pain in her shoulder Lucretia can’t help but agree.

 

-

 

They are kissing and holding one another and crying and the Hunger is almost here. Magnus wants to leave, wants to go down fighting, wants to die trying to save the people of this world, and Lucretia is holding him back in a tangle of arms and hair. _It’s not worth it,_ she wants to say but doesn’t. _It never works._ And beneath that, even stronger: _I don’t want to see your dead body again, I can’t, I don’t need any more memories for my nightmares. It doesn’t matter if it’s temporary._ She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. Magnus knows. And he lifts her up and carries her across the ship, and in every step he is saying _I want to leave but I am not, I know I can’t, I will not do that to you. I love you too much._

They are laughing when his back hits the bed, and holding each other so tightly it seems almost like they are afraid to let go. They cling so hard and do not want to let go, do not want to say _I will leave you to try and save this world that already has a death sentence_ . Instead: _I am here, I am safe, I am never letting go. I love you, I love you, I love you._ They are silent still, saying everything they need in the way Magnus’s arms encircle Lucretia, the way Lucretia’s fingernails dig in just a bit to Magnus’s sides, the way Lucretia’s head fits perfectly in Magnus’s shoulder.

 

-

 

Lucretia is so, so old when Magnus gets sick. They’re all unsure how to count their ages--do they count the century on the ship? do they count the years Lucretia got added to her body in wonderland? how should Lup count the years she was in the umbrella, or the years she was dead as a lich? So, depending on how you count it, Lucretia is somewhere between 82 and 201 years old when Magnus gets sick.

He tries to pass it off at first, tries to convince everyone that he’s just as good as always, and it half-works. Merle doesn’t notice, and neither does Taako, but Angus notices right away (“I may be older now, but I still have a very good perception modifier!”), and there’s only so long that Magnus can hide it from Lucretia when she sees him every day, especially once the dogs refuse to leave his side. And soon enough, he can’t hide it anymore. He starts to lose weight quickly and spend entire days in bed, wheezing and running high fevers. Carey rushes over and asks to stay with him, and Lucretia spends days at his bedside, while Merle casts healing spell after healing spell. Soon, Davenport comes in from sea, and Taako and Lup set up camp in the kitchen.

On his worst days, Magnus turns Julia’s wedding ring over and over in his fingers. “He looks so peaceful,” Carey whispers one day when he fell asleep clutching it.

One day, Merle is gearing up to do another healing spell when Magnus stops him. “Save your spell slots,” Magnus says weakly. “It’s okay.”

“What are you sayin’?! I’m not gonna--I’m gonna heal you, buddy.”

“It’s okay, Merle,” Lucretia says, and Taako glares at her from across the room but she ignores it. Angus’s face hurts her more anyway, as he quickly tries to hide his horror and sadness, tries not to cry.

They spend the day almost in a haze, nobody wanting to admit what was going on. Lucretia sits next to him the whole day, in one of his chairs--he made it for her when she first moved in. Barry and Lup are the only ones who genuinely don’t seem sad, and of course they’re not, this isn’t goodbye for them, and it’s not fair. Davenport waits by the foot of the bed. And the whole day, Carey refuses to let go of his hand. Killian brings her lunch, and she says no, even when Magnus tries to convince her to eat it. They are all there. On the day Magnus dies, his family refuses to leave his side.

His fever is so, so high. “It’s okay, bud. It’s okay,” Carey says. Davenport puts a hand on Magnus’s leg, smiling as reassuringly as he can. Lucretia keeps eye contact with him, comforting without even moving. He knows her deeply, intimately, and he has lived with her now for so many years, and she is here, next to him. Lup and Barry are smiling, truly, so happy for him, and seeing that he knows that it’s all going to be okay, that Julia is waiting for him. He has known them all for over a century, and they are all ready to say goodbye.

All of his family is here, and he loves them so, so much, and he smiles as the world gets hazier and hazier around him.

They wait until his pulse stops to start crying. Lup and Barry hug the others, whisper reassurances. “He’ll be happy there. Promise.”

Carey says, “Yeah, but I can't be happy there _with_ him now. I _miss_ him.” Her voice breaks at the end and they all start crying again, hugging each other because he is not there to hug them, but it's just a little more lighthearted this time, knowing that he's happy.

 

-

 

“Hey Magnus,” she says one day.

“Yeah?”

“Can I still have that free backrub?”

“I don't see why not,” he says, after his laughter dies down.

She is embarrassed at first, but his bed is soft and his hands are strong. They work their way down her back, pressing and rubbing, gentle even in their pressure, catching tense muscles and kneading them until they give in. They are big and callused but still precise and careful. Workman’s hands, carpenter’s hands. Her back is wiry and knotted, stress and years stretching the muscles to their breaking point, but her skin is soft. One by one, Magnus works the knots from her back, and by the time he finishes, she is drowsing off. He smiles looking down at her, and she smiles back up at him, the lines of her face crinkling even as her eyes droop. "Thank you," she murmurs.

"Of course."

 

-

 

Lucretia dies not long after, body over a hundred years old, on the same bed that Magnus did. The people who didn’t know her were surprised that she outlasted Magnus in a body twenty years older than his, but the people who knew them tended to be surprised the other way around, that Magnus had come so close to outliving her. It is sudden, not like Magnus’s slow wasting, over in a matter of minutes. Nobody knew in advance, so there was no gathering of family, except for Lup and Barry who came by the day before to give her gifts and hugs and food.

The world gets fuzzier and fuzzier, fading away until suddenly she can see Kravitz in perfect clarity.

“I’m ready,” she says.

“I know,” he replies, and takes her hand.


End file.
